Dr Brent's Casebook tells the story of Police Surgeon, a short-lived television series from 1960. It made its mark in TV history not for what it was but for what it led to – the world-beating show The Avengers.
Unlike its illustrious successor, Police Surgeon has faded from public memory and has rarely been revisited for the purposes of research or retrospective celebration.

Richard McGinlay and Alan Hayes now redress the balance, revealing information about the creation of the series, its production, transmission and narratives – including the mysterious Diplomatic Immunity, which never appeared in TV listings – and the circumstances that caused Police Surgeon to be brought to a sudden end after just 13 weeks.

This is what I and various others have been waiting for. Finally we get to know how Police Surgeon was assembled in what I strongly suspect was a labour of love and a very enjoyable project to both research and write. Now it is the readers turn for the enjoyment, this will be nothing short of dynamite and of immediate interest to any cult television enthusiast, plus anyone wanting inside information of how early sixties independent videotaped TV product was created. I’m looking forward to reading this a lot.

Ahead of tomorrow's publication of the hardcover and paperback editions of Dr Brent's Casebook, there is now a a free 32-page preview of the book available at the Hidden Tiger website (0.5MB, PDF format).

After three years' research, head scratching, writing, more research, considerably more head scratching, some more writing, having our jaws drop bungee-style when we saw Shaqui Le Vesconte's beautiful illustrations, Richard McGinlay and I are delighted to say that DR BRENT'S CASEBOOK - AN UNAUTHORISED GUIDE TO POLICE SURGEON is finally finished, published and available to buy!

Great excellent news, Alan, release of Police Surgeon book. The origins of the Avengers who beckoned me from the youth. There was an article in the well-known Russian TV magazine Seven Days from October 1996, which did an excellent intrigue for many Avengers fans in Russia. Bit later for it.

I remember I read somewhere many years ago, in the early 2000s, that the production of the series began in 1959, I was so intrigued by it, that began to unsuccessfully search for materials on the series. Finally, I thought things will probably remain a mystery forever, until recent event.

It's exciting to find out in book preview about production order of Police Surgeon episodes, which was different from aired order. Unexpectedly see that Dr. Jeffrey Brent in early working scripts had a different name. Have a broader view of the little-known episode Diplomatic Immunity. And many other.

A pleasant factor for reading is the structure of the book, which repeats the construction of Alan and Richard's Avengers guide of the first season of series. Content is done in detail and as usual everything is written with fascination that I read from "cover to cover" (well, as a mini-book). Definitely preview is little for full picture, will buy a whole book.

Here, translate for Russian article about The Avengers and Police Surgeon from magazine Seven Days (october 1996), from which many Russian fans first learned about this series:

The Avengers
The first episodes of the TV detective show appeared in 1961 under the title Police Surgeon. His main hero was Dr. Jeffrey Brent. Actor Ian Hendry was shining in this role. He plays Dr. David Keel in the Avengers. When a gang of drug dealers kills his favorite girl, he goes to agent John Steed to avenge. Hence the name The Avengers. In the initial series, Steed had abundance of collegues. Then there remained only one - Cathy Gale, anthropologist and judoist. But soon actress Honor Blackman left and was replaced by the famous Diana Rigg.
With the appearing of Miss Peel, The Avengers have become much more dynamic. In 1970, the tape was resumed. Steed had a new partner - blue-eyed beauty Tara King (actress Linda Thorson). Actor Patrick Macnee was already 50 years old. But he was still charming, penetrating and ironic.

Yes, so in Russia seems we all believed in the state of things according to this magazine article, until 1998, when there was released August number magazine Premiere. I have to admit, I sometimes even imagined that Steed had at first about 50 assistants before Cathy Gale was left alone.

Many thanks, Alan, for wonderful gift for Avengers fans as Police Surgeon book, The origins of the Avengers. Cheers._________________Russian fan-site Steedumbrella.
http://steedumbrella.ru

Denis

Last edited by denis rigg on Mon Apr 03, 2017 9:47 pm; edited 1 time in total

Finally got a chance to post about this very lovely volume which I finished reading the other week.

I love books like this about the more obscure series which have graced our screens, and this has been a terrifically informative read which offers me really all I'd want to know about the subject in a single, very-readable package. The detail of the synopses with the lengthy dialogue extracts gives me a real feel of the nature of the episodes and their presentation, and the overall effect with the superb illustrations is delightful. But most of all, I think I'm impressed that the volume is focused on the fact that it is a "Police Surgeon" work rather than some sort of minor adjunct to "The Avengers" under the mis-apprehension that it's Series 0; there isn't an over-reliance on drawing parallels to the later work in particular, but far more of a sense of how it fits in to ABC's portfolio and the UK TV landscape of the time.

A real pleasure to add this to the collection. It'd be great to see similar works on some other shows from this era.

Just finished reading this book and have to say it was a great read. I had held off buying it as I wasn't sure how interested in Police Surgeon I would actually be, but the book completely won me over! I won't say it's a shame that the series ended so prematurely as we may never have got The Avengers. However, I'd really love to see more episodes. Sadly, I guess the chances of any further episodes being found are even more remote than for The Avengers and it's probably too obscure a series to interest Big Finish in creating audio adaptations._________________Old account paulpdjh